By Bryan Delaney, NTSB Safety Advocate
Since 2007, Teen Driver Safety Week has emphasized safe driving practices among young drivers and fostered important conversations on the future of teen driver safety.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has long advocated for teen and young driver safety. This includes directly encouraging teen drivers to use their seat belts, put their phones away while driving, always drive sober, avoid drowsy driving, limit the number of passengers in the car, and follow the speed limit.
The NTSB also issues recommendations to states to improve their laws, whether specifically for teen drivers (for example, by enacting strong graduated drivers licensing laws) or for all drivers (such as enforcing a .05 g/dL blood alcohol concentration limit and strong seat belt laws).
In addition to teen driver responsibility and changes to laws that will make driving safer for teens, advanced driver safety technologies are shaping the future of teen driver safety.
According to a recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study, crash avoidance features and teen-specific vehicle technologies have the potential to prevent or mitigate up to 75% of fatal crashes involving teen drivers. But that potential depends on properly using this technology.
Below is a guide to the functions and safety benefits for collision avoidance technologies that are widely available in vehicles today.
Adaptive Cruise Control: Adaptive Cruise Control helps your vehicle maintain a safe following distance from the vehicle in front of it by automatically adjusting your car’s speed. This technology helps reduce the likelihood of rear-end collisions, a common crash scenario among teen drivers.
Lane-Keeping Assist: Lane-Keeping Assist uses cameras and sensors to monitor lane markings and automatically provide steering assistance to keep the vehicle in the lane.
Forward Collision Warning: Forward Collision Warning systems use sensors to monitor your vehicle’s speed and the speed and distance of the vehicle in front of you and sends alerts of a potential crash.
Automatic Emergency Braking: Automatic Emergency Braking takes Forward Collision Warning to the next level by automatically applying the brakes to avoid or mitigate a crash.
Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking: Pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems are designed to initiate an automatic braking sequence to avoid a forward crash with a pedestrian or bicyclist.
Blind Spot Warning: Blind Spot Warning systems alert drivers with visual or haptic warnings during lane changes if a vehicle is detected in an adjacent lane.
Adaptive Headlights: Adaptive Headlights improve lighting to changing roadway conditions, such as a curve, to improve visibility on the road. Because nighttime driving is particularly risky for teen drivers, adaptive headlights can improve driving conditions for inexperienced drivers. As collision avoidance technology becomes more broadly accepted and evolves, getting the best safety benefit from the technology for the newest drivers remains critical to teen driver safety. During Teen Driver Safety Week, we encourage parents and their teens to understand the driver assistance technologies in their vehicles and learn how to properly use them to improve safety.
